The Communications Executive Council hosted 17 heads of Communications at CEB’s headquarters near Washington last week to discuss Building a Change-Ready Organization. My colleague Rick DeLisi moderated (as he always does) a lively, engaging, and interactive discussion. Members can find our latest updates on this work here.
At the end of the day, we asked these leaders for their top takeaways from the meeting. I personally find their responses incredibly insightful in terms of where the communications profession needs to go next. Drum roll, please!
Top Takeaways
5. Better communications = quantifiable impact on the bottom line. There is a measurable – and large! – link between (a) what communications can do to drive employees’ agility and (b) company performance. For the average large organization, a 10% improvement in three aspects of the communication environment drives over $16 million in incremental profit per $1 billion in revenue. A 10% improvement isn’t unreasonable: it’s essentially moving up one quartile in relative performance from wherever you are today.
4. How to use your seat at the table. The key to creating this measurable value lies not so much in better writing or other traditional communication skills, but in enabling more effective communication within the organization. What are the new skills and how can you get them? Check out the Council’s resources here.
3. What’s really hard about empowerment. Extolling the virtues of empowerment to senior executives won’t translate into action deeper in the organization. But you can guide executives and managers alike to discover for themselves how they (often inadvertently) stifle their staff’s problem solving and to help each other find ways to empower employees in complete harmony with other business priorities. Council member GlaxoSmithKline shared a workshop others were eager to replicate; stay tuned for more detail.
2. In times of change, you need agility, not buy-in. Buy-in helps employees recover from productivity-sapping emotional responses to change, like loss, doubt, confusion, and disorientation. But when change happens more than once every 2-3 years, you never recover fast enough. Wouldn’t it be better if change weren’t so disruptive – if it weren’t something you had to “recover” from? Agile employees actually “lean in” to change and increase their performance and productivity. The highest-leverage actions an organization can take to increase employees’ agility are all about communication: (a) share information employees need to solve problems and execute strategy; (b) create better platforms for peer sharing and learning; and (c) empower employees to solve more problems on their own.
And now the number 1 takeaway on the day – a very actionable message to communicators:
1. It’s actually what you say, not (just) how you say it. A skilled communicator already does a great job finding the most effective way to get a message through to employees by selecting the right channels(s) and making complex ideas clear and simple. But to make employees more agile, it matters a lot what information you share. The rationale behind strategy and clear next steps get you buy-in. Leading communicators guide business partners to share information employees can use to solve problems while executing strategy and to understand (and personally relate to) what matters in the organization’s market environment.
If you’re interested in learning more, don’t miss the chance to share ideas with and learn from your peers at one of our Executive Retreats (reserved for the head of corporate communications) or Regional Briefings .
Related CEC Resources:
on 2 June 2011
Respond
While I agree with the sentiments of the number 1 takeaway – clear context for change has to be communicated and reinforced from the outset – the how also incorporates “who”. The change sponsor has to be an authentic advocate for change and needs to demonstrate commitment and resiliance. As so much of change needs to be delivered face to face to achieve the engagement required – this front spokesperson must be credible. If you get the who of the how wrong, it is difficult for employees to support the change being proposed.
on 5 June 2011
Respond
Hi Laura. This is an interesting point you bring up in terms of who communicates context. I agree with your point that face-to-face communication from a credible spokesperson matters a lot – and the best practices we have identified within the CEC membership suggest the same. Especially interesting in all this is that what you need is not necessarily an advocate or spokesperson for change per se, but an advocate for the contextual information that helps staff act.
on 8 June 2011
Respond
[...] Email Print This Post Tweet Several recent CEC blog posts have featured general reflections on the May 26th kick-off meeting for our executive retreat series, [...]
on 9 June 2011
Respond
[...] if you’ve been following our work on Building a Change-Ready Organization, you know that we think there is a goal far superior to employee buy-in…employee agility. When [...]